Limoncello Yellow (Franki Amato Mysteries) (37 page)

"
Well, if you need a man to replace that banker, sugar, I'm willing to share," Glenda said. And then with a Vanna White–like flourish of her arm she added, "A body like this can't be wasted on only one gentleman, even if he is a strong man in the circus."

"
A strong man?" Veronica squealed, clapping her hands. "Tell me more!"

I, on the other hand, had already heard all I wanted to hear. So I picked up my phone and stared at the time.
"Wow. It's almost 10:30. We'd better get going if we're meeting Twyla at the office at eleven."

"
Oh, okay." Veronica frowned. She pulled two twenties from her wallet. "Let me get this since you're having to work on a Sunday."

"
Thanks." I grabbed my purse and fled the bar.

* * *

"Good afternoon, ladies," Twyla said in a somber tone as she entered the office lobby. Her vibrant pinkish-yellow sack dress made her look a lot like a giant grapefruit.

"
Hi, Twyla," I replied, quickly scooping up the photos of Harry and the brunette that Veronica and I had been reviewing on the coffee table moments before.

Twyla
took a seat on the couch and then tightly clutched a vintage wooden decoupage purse to her chest, as though it were a shield she could use to protect herself from the news she was about to receive. "I'd like to thank you girls for so kindly agreeing to meet me at your office on a Sunday." Her ruby red lips set in a thin line. "I would have dearly luuuved to invite you to tea, but Harry is at home right now playing with his train set."

A train set? If you asked me, this Harry seemed like the opposite of a catch.

"That's all right Twyla," Veronica soothed. "It's probably better if you look at the pictures here, anyway."

A muscle twitched in
Twyla's cheek. "What did you find out?"

"
We–" Veronica began.

"
Wait!" Twyla interrupted, raising her right hand in the air. "Don't tell me yet!" She opened the clasp of her purse with pinkish-yellow-lacquered fingernails and pulled out her smelling salts. Then she placed the bottle on the coffee table in front of her and pulled her purse back to her ample bosom. "Okay. I'm ready now."

Veronica cleared her throat.
"As you know, we have followed Harry for the last two nights. On Friday, he went to Pascal's Manale restaurant in Uptown, and on Saturday he went to a private residence in the Garden District."

Twyla
's eyes grew wide at the mention of a home. "Was this house on Magazine Street, by any chance?"

"
No," I replied. "Prytania."

She blinked in surprise and said nothing.

I pushed the photos of Harry and the brunette across the table to Twyla. "He met this woman on both occasions."

She peered down at the photo on the top of the pile with one eye closed. Then with a sharp intake of breath she jerked her head up in alarm.
"That's not Patsy!" she shouted, as though Patsy were somehow a preferable choice for an affair.

Veronica shook her head.
"No. We haven't been able to identify the woman yet. The house where Harry met her is listed in a man's name."

Twyla
looked from Veronica to me. Then she stiffened oddly, her eyes rolled back in her head, and she abruptly fell back against the couch, her head hanging over the back. She was out cold.

"
Grab her smelling salts!" Veronica shouted.

I snatched the vial off the table and snapped it open between my fingers. While Veronica carefully lifted
Twyla's head, I began to wave the contents of the vial under Twyla's nose.

After about five seconds, the smelling salts began to take effect, and
Twyla slowly regained consciousness. Her eyelids fluttered for a moment, and then she opened her eyes. She blinked a few times. "Am I in heaven?"

"
No." I half-smiled.

She raised an eyebrow.
"The ICU?"

"
You're at Private Chicks, Inc.," Veronica said softly. "You hired us to investigate your husband, Harry."

Twyla
furrowed her brow as though deep in thought and then went straight to despondent mode. "Haaaarry!" she wailed, choking back a sob. "How could he
do
this to me? And after almost fifty years of wedded bliss!"

Veronica handed her a box of tissues.
"Twyla, we don't know if Harry has done anything to you yet. All we know for sure is that he met with this woman two nights in a row."

Twyla
's tears shut off as quickly as water from a closed faucet.

"
You mean you don't actually
know
whether he's been unfaithful to me?" She dabbed her tear-stained eyes with a tissue.

I shook my head.
"No."

"
Well, Harry's quite fatherly, you know. Maybe that was the daughter of one of his clients, and he was just trying to be of assistance in some way?"

I looked helplessly at Veronica.

"Oh, you don't have to answer that, darling." Twyla patted my knee. "It was just a rhetorical question."

"
We apologize if there was any confusion about our findings," Veronica said.

"
Not at all, dear." Twyla rose to her feet. "I want to thank you girls for all your trouble. I'll let you know if I need you to investigate this unseemly matter any further, after I've talked to Harry, of course." She walked to the door and then turned to face us. "Whatever you girls do, don't make the tragic mistake of choosing a dashing man like my Harry to be your groom. Because if you do, you'll have to protect him from shameless trollops for your entire marriage."

* * *

"Bad boy, Napoleon!" I scolded for the second time since carrying him into the house. I'd taken him out for a walk, and he'd pulled the leash from my hand to chase a cat through the cemetery. Nothing like a romp through a graveyard just hours before you meet with an alleged murderer to lift your spirits, so to speak.

I hung the leash on a hook next to my front door and then looked around the living room. It was three o
'clock, so I still had a good hour and a half before I had to leave to meet Stewart Preston at the Carousel Bar. I needed to find something to do to keep my mind occupied because I was starting to get nervous. Dust the furniture? Oh no, I was never that desperate. Read? I wouldn't be able to focus on the page. Have a snack and watch mindless TV? Sounded like a plan.

After grabbing a bag of Mint Milanos and the Nutella from the pantry, I headed for my bedroom. I swung open the doors of my hot pink and black armoire and switched on the tiny TV set I
'd received as a hand-me-down from my parents. I flopped down onto the bed and began flipping through the channels with the remote. The first movie I came across was
The Silence of the Lambs
. FBI trainee meets cannibalistic serial killer? Definitely not. I shivered and changed the channel.
Unsolved Mysteries
? Not that either. After tonight, there was every possibility that I could become an unsolved mystery myself. I turned off the TV.

Now what? Eating the entire bag of Mint Milanos—dipped in Nutella—would while away some time. I pulled out the first cookie and heard a whimper coming from the floor below.

I narrowed my eyes. "Not a chance, Napoleon, especially not after that cemetery caper."

Luckily, my phone began to ring. Talking on the phone was always a good distraction. I checked the display hopefully, and my heart began to thud when I realized that it was Bradley.

Of course, I wanted to answer that call with every fiber of my being and ask him what the hell he was doing out with a bikinied bimbo when he was married. But I couldn't. Bradley's wandering ways were no longer any concern of mine. I just wished that I knew what it was about me that attracted cheaters. Was I not interesting or attractive enough to keep a guy? Or did I give off a cheat-on-me vibe?

When the ringing stopped, I waited with baited breath to see whether Bradley had left a voicemail. At least two minutes passed. I checked the voicemail box: nothing. The inconsiderate
jerk
. Now I had to find a way to take my mind off Bradley.

I decided to check my email. I grabbed my laptop from the bedside table and logged in. Some of the messages were obvious spam—an ad for Viagra, news I
'd won an overseas lottery, and an offer of marriage from a Russian bride. But then I saw "photo request" in the subject line of one of the messages. It was the picture I'd requested from
The Times-Picayune
of Stewart Preston waving on the courthouse steps!

I opened the message and double-clicked the attachment. It wouldn
't open. I tried two more times and then discovered that the file was corrupt. I started to reply to the email but then changed my mind. I was meeting Stewart in less than two hours, and I really wanted to know whether my hunch about his watchband was right. I checked the email for a signature and saw the name Dmitriy and a phone number. I entered the number into my phone and waited.

"
Times-Picayune," a youthful male voice responded.

"
Hi, could I please speak to Dmitriy?" I asked.

"
You got him," he said. "How can I help you?"

"
My name is Franki Amato, and I just received an email from you with an attached .jpg file. But, the file is corrupt."

"
Was it the photo of Stewart Preston?" he asked.

"
Yes," I said, mildly surprised that he would remember the picture.

"
What is the
deal
with that image?" he muttered under his breath.

"
Pardon?"

"
Oh, no, I wasn't asking you that question. It's just that when I originally went to retrieve the photo, it wasn't on our server. Luckily, my friend Norm was the photographer assigned to that story, so I was able to get the picture for you from his personal archives. It's just weird that now there's a problem with the file."

I felt my heart rate speed up.
"So, you're saying that the photo was deleted from your server?"

"
Yeah, because it was used in an article, it should've been in our process file, but it wasn't there. It wasn't in our stock file either. But, hey, when your staff consists of mainly unpaid interns, these things happen. Someone probably deleted the image by mistake."

"
Sure," I said, although I doubted that an intern would have accidentally deleted the picture from two separate files. "So, are you still able to open the file?"

"
Yeah, it opens right up for me. It's a pretty big file, though. It could be that the picture didn't completely download from our server."

"
Could you email it to me again?" I asked, holding my breath in anticipation.

"
Yes, ma'am! I just hit 'Send' a second ago."

I breathed a sigh of relief and refreshed my inbox. The new message was there. I clicked the attached file, and this time it opened without incident.
"Got it. Thank you so much for your help, Dmitriy."

After I closed the call, I laid back on my bed, stunned. Who would have deleted the file from not one but two places on the
Times-Picayune
server? Could it really have been a careless intern? Or was it someone connected to Stewart Preston? If it was the latter, then it could mean only one thing: There was incriminating evidence in that photo that Stewart or his family didn't want anyone to see. Just like I suspected.

I quickly picked up my laptop and scrutinized Stewart
's raised hand and wrist in the photo. The watchband was protruding about a half an inch or so from the cuff of his suit coat. I began enlarging the area click by click until it consumed the screen. By the fifth click, I felt my body grow cold. Stewart wasn't wearing a chunky watchband at all. Hidden beneath the sleeve of his suit coat, he was wearing a bracelet of skull beads. And they were exactly like the skull bead that I had found lodged underneath the scarf rack at the scene of Jessica's murder.

My mind flashed to the night of the murder. Had Stewart gone to LaMarca wearing the bracelet? If he had, then it was possible that the bracelet had been broken during a struggle with Jessica. Maybe Jessica had even ripped the bracelet from Stewart
's wrist and then lodged one of the beads under the rack to implicate him as he was strangling her. Unfortunately, the only person who could confirm that theory was Jessica herself. There was only one thing I could do: try to find out whether Stewart still had that bracelet. It seemed like an impossible task, but it was a matter of life and death.

Specifically, my own.

"
I just can't get over it," Veronica said. She was standing in front of her kitchen sink wringing water out of a cashmere sweater while I was wringing my hands. "I've looked at that picture of Stewart a dozen times, and I never noticed anything unusual."